When to avoid reviewing other people’s papers and presentations

When to avoid reviewing other people’s papers and presentations

Most of us review communication for colleagues.

When doing this, the temptation is to dive in and edit the words on the page.

This involves going straight into the detail, fixing typos, changing words and potentially tightening or removing sentences or whole sections.

In other words, it requires you to work bottom-up to iterate in the weeds to hope you find the message.

This is time-consuming and messy, and inevitably leads to more rework and less clarity. It means you contribute to what I call the Chain of Pain. See below.

 

It is also unlikely to drive a fast and effective business outcome.

Here is what I suggest instead.

If you don't know what specific outcome your colleague is shooting for and can't find the main message at a glance …. ‘make like Kissinger'.

He is famous for asking his subordinates the following question before reviewing their work.

“Is this your best work?”.

If yes, great. He'd review it.

If not … he'd ask them to keep working on it before using his time to review.

I hope that helps. More soon.

Kind regards,
Davina

WANT MORE?

Free ‘How to cut rework' MasterClass Monday – Part of Clarity Hub along with weekly in-depth ‘how to' emails, an extensive library of tips, tools, exercises and case studies to lift the quality of your communication.

One month free. Ongoing access is USD25 per month or USD250 per year. Learn more here.

PowerPoint image library – Want to save time preparing complex but attractive PowerPoint concepts? My image library offers 300 cut and paste images. Grab your free sample of 25 or the full 300 images here.

 

How to be human when communicating with senior leaders

How to be human when communicating with senior leaders

A couple of situations this week reminded me of the importance of differentiating between ‘content’ and ‘context’.

On the one hand I was listening to a fascinating podcast where Lex Fridman interviewed Yann Lecun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta about the abilities and limitations of AI.

On the other, I was reviewing communication to provide suggestions to participants from one of my corporate board paper writing programs.

What fascinated me here was that much of the communication I was reviewing was ‘content' that lacked ‘context'.

This bothered me because placing content in the right context is not only central to our uniqueness as humans, but essential if we want to engage senior decision makers.

And yet, I see teams frequently skipping this foundational step in the rush to finish their paper.

I get that thinking feels slow and that ‘writing' feels like ‘doing', but it reminds me of a comment made by an old boss of mine. “activity does not guarantee impact”.

With the right inputs, AI can deliver lots of content.

So far (!) we humans are the only ones that can take ‘content' and add ‘context' to have impact.

Let’s be human.

I hope that helps.

More soon.
Dav

WANT MORE?

Monthly MasterClass  – New topics every month, as well as access to an extensive library of recordings, case studies, tools and templates to lift the quality of your communication.

One month free. Ongoing access is USD25 per month or USD250 per year. Learn more here.

 PowerPoint image library – Want to save time preparing complex but attractive PowerPoint concepts? My image library offers 300 cut and paste images. Grab your free sample of 25 or the full 300 images here.

 

How to deliver better board and SLT papers more quickly

How to deliver better board and SLT papers more quickly

TLDR …..

1. Thank you for the LinkedIn follows. I very much appreciate your support as I build my profile on that platform.
2. The March BoardPaper Bootcamp is open. Learn more here.
3. Today's topic: Better papers more quickly.

_______________________________

How often do papers come together in a scramble just before they must be submitted for review? Perhaps you …

… left it to the last because you assumed you only needed to tweak a few details in last month's paper, only to realise that this particular board presentation required more?

… received an ambiguous briefing and delayed your preparation because you frankly didn't know where to begin?

… waited for quite some time to receive stakeholder feedback, which turned out to be substantive and required you to burn the midnight oil to finish?

These are just three collaborative challenges that limit not only the speed of preparation, but also the quality of insights they contain.

Why?

Delivering papers that are both insightful and useful leans more heavily on collaboration than many realise.

In my experience, teams that prepare their papers with minimal midnight oil result from leaders driving the process that:

  • Readies their teams early so they appreciate why the paper is needed and what it needs to achieve.
  • Iterates the messaging around a highly-structured one-pager to ensure everyone can contribute quickly and substantively to what really needs to be said.
  • Settles the document to check that it reflects the agreed messaging before it is delivered.
  • Embeds the learnings from preparing and delivering the communication to ensure the team can grow together.

Here is how I visualise a process that consistently elevates the quality of thinking in my client's papers while slashing the time they take to prepare them.

I hope that helps, more next week.

Davina.

PS – This is the framework that underpins both of my new books, Elevate and Engage. I'll be sharing more from the book in the coming months as we finalise each one

 

WANT MORE?

Free MasterClass  – New topics every month, as well as access to an extensive library of recordings, case studies, tools and templates to lift the quality of your communication.

One month free. Ongoing access is USD25 per month or USD250 per year. Learn more here.

March BoardPaper Bootcamp now open – Work with me in a small group and in 1-1 coaching to prepare papers and presentations that engage senior leaders and boards. Maximum cohort of 15. Learn more here.

 

Is your paper really for noting?

Is your paper really for noting?

Hello Davina,

TLDR …..
1. Thank you for the LinkedIn follows. I very much appreciate your support as I build my profile on that platform.
2. The March BoardPaper Bootcamp is open. Learn more here.
3. Today's topic: Papers for noting …. really?

_______________________________

I had a terrific question from a client recently that highlighted a common strategic challenge.

How do we structure our messaging for a ‘paper for noting’?

Adrian's was concerned he didn’t have a ‘big insight’, but that ‘noting' felt wrong.

He wanted to prepare his board to hear a business case in a couple of months’ time.

So, what to do?

We landed seeking endorsement for his plan to prepare a business case as the best way to give the paper purpose while raising visibility of the problem. Here’s why we made that choice:

  • Asking them to ‘note’ that we have a problem without any indication of what the team was preparing to do about it seemed lacking. The team wasn’t ready to deliver a solution, but this option would leave the Board empty handed.
  • Asking permission to prioritise preparing the business case to find a solution to the problem was unnecessary. Adrian had full authority, particularly when supported by the Senior Leadership Team, to prepare the business case without asking for permission. So, we landed on a third path.
  • Asking the Board to endorse their plan to prepare a business case gave the paper purpose and raised visibility of the problem. This strategy let the Board know that a problem existed, demonstrated early that the team was taking action and provided clarity around the next steps.

I hope that helps. More next week.

Davina

 

 

WANT MORE?

Free report-writing MasterClass tomorrow on Feb 26 – Part of Clarity Hub along with an extensive library of tips, tools, exercises and case studies. Includes weekly email with in-depth advice, including the takeaways from the case study I mentioned here and the full case study itself.

One month free. Ongoing access is USD25 per month or USD250 per year. Learn more here.

March BoardPaper Bootcamp now half full – Work with me in a small group and in 1-1 coaching to prepare papers and presentations that engage senior leaders and boards. Maximum cohort of 15. Learn more here.

PowerPoint image library – Want to save time preparing complex but attractive PowerPoint concepts? My image library offers 300 cut and paste images. Grab your free sample of 25 or the full 300 images here.

 

How to keep your board on topic

How to keep your board on topic

Has this happened to you?

You have an important presentation to make to a senior leadership group and a big chunk of the time is spent talking about ‘background’.

The leaders ask every question under the sun about the history of the program, what you have done in the past and you find yourself repeating your last five presentations.

You use precious face time with them looking backwards rather than looking forwards.

This has been a hot topic with my clients lately so I thought I'd share my number one strategy for avoiding this conundrum.

Here it is: Get straight to the point to make your audience curious about what you want to discuss.

There is a tendency to assume that leaders need all of the detail so they can understand your main point.

In my experience this has the opposite effect. Leaders don't know how these ideas are relevant and so interrupt with questions that seek clarification.

Instead, I encourage my clients to introduce their main message very early in the communication.

This then makes your audience curious about the things you want to discuss, rather than setting them up to take you on a guided rabbit hole tour.

When done well, this sets your audience up to ask questions that invite you to provide the necessary background information.

It puts it in the right context, lifts the quality of the discussion and reduces the risk that you will be sent back with more questions rather than the decision you need.

I hope that helps. More next soon.

Kind regards,
Davina


PS – Can I ask a favour? If you like my emails and would like to learn more from me, follow me on LinkedIn.

I am setting myself up to become a LinkedIn course creator and need more followers to meet their criteria.

Thank you!

WANT MORE?

Free report-writing MasterClass tomorrow on Feb 26 – Part of Clarity Hub along with an extensive library of tips, tools, exercises and case studies. Includes weekly email with in-depth advice, including the takeaways from the case study I mentioned here and the full case study itself. 

One month free. Ongoing access is USD25 per month or USD250 per year. Learn more here.

March BoardPaper Bootcamp now half full – Work with me in a small group and in 1-1 coaching to prepare papers and presentations that engage senior leaders and boards. Maximum cohort of 15. Learn more here.

PowerPoint image library – Want to save time preparing complex but attractive PowerPoint concepts? My image library offers 300 cut and paste images. Grab your free sample of 25 or the full 300 images here.

How to build trust with your senior leaders

How to build trust with your senior leaders

TLDR: The answer is to provide less information and more insight around a specific point of view.

Do you ever worry about a lack of trust between you and your senior folk? Perhaps these are the sorts of things that happen when you present?

  • You receive more questions than answers, with the worst of these meetings feeling more like an inquisition than a conversation.
  • The discussion gets lost in rabbit holes than focusing on the main game.
  • You leave meetings without the clarity and decisions you need to get on with delivering value.

It is easy to feel that these behaviours point to a lack of trust.

While that may be true, the real question is what to do about it.

In my experience, the best solution is to avoid requests for more information by providing greater insight in the first place. Here’s how.

  • Take the time to understand what you really need to provide to the leaders in that specific interaction to drive progress. This requires deep thought about your commercial reality as well as about your stakeholders.
  • Focus every communication around one single powerful point of view, no matter how complex the material. If you can't say it in a sentence, you aren't ready to convey it.
  • Declutter your communication by only including items that support that point of view. This will be a forcing device to confirm your point of view is the right one and that you are focusing on what together you must deliver for the organisation.

This requires not only courage, but extreme clarity about what is really needed to get the outcome you need to drive progress.

Learn more about how to go about this by:

 I hope that helps, more soon.

Davina

PS – Can I ask a favour?

I need to lift my profile on LinkedIn so I can become a LinkedIn course creator. I need to triple my followers to reach their benchmark.

Here’s my link.

As part of this campaign, I’ll be posting more ideas on this platform too, so there will be something in it for you also.

Thanks so much!

 

When NOT to seek strategy approval

When NOT to seek strategy approval

How often do you outline your desired outcome as follows:

I want the Board to approve my ABC strategy?


While this is a good place to start and most likely true in the general sense, it’s not sufficient.

A general statement like this does not set you up to truly understand your audience’s issues and concerns.

This in turn does not set you up to tell a story that resonates.

Instead, I encourage you to be more specific so you flush out the issues that you must address to get your strategy across the line. Here are the questions I ask:

  1. Strategy: What is distinctive about this strategy and its implementation?
  2. Situation around the strategy: Where does this strategy ‘sit’ within the broader organisation and industry ecosystem?
  3. Stakeholder attitudes: How will stakeholder histories and hot buttons impact your ability to ‘sell’ the strategy?


Answering these questions will help you define a much more nuanced ‘purpose’ that will in turn set you up to prepare a communication that gets you the outcome you need.

I hope that helps and look forward to having more ideas for you after the Christmas break.

Kind regards,
Davina


PS – For deeper insight into what sits inside each of these questions as well as how and when to use them, register for the Clarity Hub.

 

A trap to avoid when engaging senior leaders

A trap to avoid when engaging senior leaders

When we talk about deeply understanding our audience, what do we really mean?

Is defining our audience as ‘the board’ or ‘the senior leadership team’ sufficient?

If your issue is uncontentious, then likely yes.

However, more often than not, leadership groups not only bring different experiences but different perspectives that we must understand if we are to engage them.

This week I helped a senior group untangle their own engagement strategy for a board paper and an issue emerged that will help you too.

The team had missed an important nuance when thinking about their individual board member's attitudes toward their paper.

They had not thought deeply enough about each person as an individual rather than part of the group.

To learn more specific ideas about how to avoid this problem, register for the Clarity Hub  and visit the Stakeholder Management area.

I hope that helps.

Dav

PS – Here are some recent podcast episodes you can find either using the links below or by visiting your favourite podcasting player.

Recent episodes of Cutting Through

  1. Anthony Wilson – Risk Management = Change Management
  2. Richard Medcalf – Making Time for Strategy
  3. Damien Woods – Baking Learning & Growth into BAU
  4. Kerry Bulter – Helping Leaders ‘shift testing left' to derisk projects
  5. Daniel Musson – A Case Study in Digitial Transformation
  6. Carolyn Noumertzis – How to help a senior leader come back from a misstep
  7. Cerise Uden – How to hit the ground running in a big new role
  8. Adam Bennett – Communicating Great Change
  9. Lisa Carlin – TurboCharge your Transformation


Please do tell your friends and colleagues about them too.

Why small steps matter

Why small steps matter

If you could do just one thing to elevate the quality of your communication, what would it be?

This is a variation of a question I was asked last Sunday.

The sentiment is helpful.

Rather than procrastinating about a big hairy audacious goal, what is one concrete step we could take toward that goal?

How to move closer rather than daunted by its very audaciousness and the associated ambiguity?

For some, the idea of being a great communicator is an audacious goal. They know they need to take big steps.

For most, the idea of becoming a better communicator is ambiguous.

Using that C word at work, do we mean …

  • Writing?
  • PowerPointing?
  • Visualising ideas in diagrams?
  • Having challenging conversations?
  • Demonstrating empathy?
  • Telling stories?
  • Getting to the point?
  • Preferencing micro communication, eg chat threads over email?
  • Pitching ideas?
  • Being strategic about messaging?
  • Managing stakeholders?
  • Running meetings?

All of these things, and more, can fall into the communication bucket.

We can all get better at all of them.

But how much better is necessary? How soon?

And, how do we know, given few of us receive genuinely helpful feedback on our communication?

So, what small step will you take this week?

Here are three ideas (two of which are free!):

  1. Complete my free 10-minute email course. It shares the same principles that underpin great papers and presentations, which you can use anywhere.
  2. Untangle a difficult stakeholder situation with this decision tree. Do you understand why your stakeholder is being difficult? Is it your message, your engagement strategy or your proposition that needs to shift for you to make progress?
  3. Sign up for Clarity Hub. Log in and pick one thing to do.
    – Read a post about stakeholder management, engaging boards, or another topic that is relevant to you right now
    – Find an exercise and do it
    – Watch a MasterClass recording. Yes, you can fast-forward through it too. There are half a dozen options in the Past Events area.
    – Try the Pattern Picker. See if it can help you think through your needs and fast-track you to the structure you need for your next communication.
    – Email me with a challenge you face so I can share my thoughts via the weekly email or perhaps a new MasterClass

So, what step will you take this week?

I hope that helps.

More next week.

Warm regards,
Davina

 

How to shorten your communication

How to shorten your communication

Naturally, I want my two new books to be as short as possible, and I've been reflecting on the best way to do that.

It seems to me there are three ways to go about it, one of which is much more effective than the others. Let me explain.

Polish it. I tighten the language and work ‘bottom up' to improve clarity and flow. Shortening comes two ways here. I either tighten the language or improve the synthesis. I have been doing a lot of this, in part with the help of a tool called Hemingway. It's super cheap and I get nothing from sharing it. It's just awesome.

Snip it. Here I go further and cut out chunks that add no value because they repeat or are off topic. This is still a bottom-up strategy, and also one that I have been using with rigour. There comes a point, though, where this isn't enough.

Target it. This is the most effective way to cut. By taking the time at the outset to be hyper clear about the outcome I seek, I change the dynamic three ways.

  • I write less  
  • I know what to cut  
  • I know when to stop iterating and rethink


In working on what I thought was the final version of Elevate, my new book for leaders, I realised that I thought I was at the polish stage. But, I found myself struggling to polish, and frustrated by snipping and moving things around.

This frustration helped me realise I needed to get back on target. The draft wasn't doing what I needed it to do. It wasn't direct enough. It lacked synthesis in some parts and risked losing readers as the flow in one major section wasn't orderly enough.

Although of course disappointing, it is satisfying too. I am pleased to have a clear target to return to.

If you are in the middle of reworking a paper or presentation, where are you at?

Have you thought through what very specific outcome you need? If the draft feels ‘off', what is the best way to fix it? Polish, snip or re-target?

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina


A fast hack for structuring your message

A fast hack for structuring your message

My husband and I were just talking about the new ‘synthesis' capabilities that Adobe is embedding into its software.

This led us to a debate about the extent tools like this could be useful … or perhaps even replace us?

Here's my take.

These tools will both help us and require us to lift our game so we can offer insightful points of view, particularly to senior decision makers. Here are four thoughts to help you do that.

Use tools like this to summarise – ie paraphrase – volumes of data. They can help organise the information and present it clearly, mostly by categorising the material. Be careful, of course, that the ‘machine' has enough of the right material to work with.

Understand that summary alone is not enough. Summary is helpful, but only looks backwards at what has happened already. This is necessary but not sufficient for decision making.

Learn to synthesise powerful points of view. Synthesis is where you connect dots between past experience, case studies, analogies and our own understanding of the present to create a point of view.

Leverage communication patterns. What if you could work through a decision tree to pick which pattern helped you convey your point of view best? You could take the data summary and combine it with your own insights to convey a powerful point of view with compelling clarity.

You might even get it done without multiple late nights iterating the message.

I shared how to do this at last week's MasterClass, along with my revised set of 10 patterns and my new Pattern Picking process.

The edited half-hour recording is inside my (still free) Clarity Hub, along with a fast hack for picking the right pattern for your situation.

>> Access the Clarity Hub here.

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

What to recommend to senior leaders and Boards?

What to recommend to senior leaders and Boards?

Do you wonder what to write those boxes in the admin section of your senior paper or presentation?

There will be the basics like date, author, paper type, attachments etc.

Buried in the middle of this list will be one that says ‘Recommendation'.

I'd like to help you deliver valuable insight right from the get go rather than following administrative protocol for its own sake. 
Here is what not to do and a better alternative.

Don't say nothing …

Don't repeat what's in the ‘paper type' box that asks whether it is a paper to offer a recommendation, stimulate a discussion or for noting.

An example would be to say:

That the Committee NOTE this report

This only leaves them asking … but what is in the report? What does it say?

Offer insight right from the get go …

Your audience is hungry to know what you think. They want to know your insights.

Here is an example:

That the Committee NOTE that the risks for ABC issue remain within risk appetite across all dimensions, except Area 1 and Area 2 which have been affected by DEF issue.

This approach addresses the formality by explaining that the paper be noted – and adds value by explaining what in particular they are noting.

To get more ideas on how to better engage senior leaders and Boards, join the Clarity Hub. It's low on cost but big on resources, all designed to help you lift the quality of your communication and board papers. Learn more here >>

I hope that helps. More soon.
Davina


PS – You might also like to check out my  Board Paper Bootcamp. I will be offering one cohorts several times a year, suitable for a range of timezones.

Do you really need to INFORM your audience?

Do you really need to INFORM your audience?

I write this to you having just wrapped up a coaching session where a perennial question arose.

My client suggested that the paper we were discussing needed to inform her peers.

But, did it really?

Why did she need to inform her peers about this particular set of facts?

It turned out the real objective was to build trust that the current efforts to increase the time employees spend in the office were working.

Once it was clear that trust rather than knowledge was the goal, we could make the messaging much more focused and engaging.

So, when you next think that you need your audience to know something, ask why they need to know it. Here are two steps to take

First, check why you need to inform your audience. Could it be to gain the following from your audience?

  1. Action: Undertake a specific task or set of tasks where your audience understands why they need to be undertaken.
  2. Implement: Put something into effect where you explain what to do but the audience decides how to do it.
  3. Support: Help to someone, potentially you, in undertaking an activity without undertaking the activity themselves.
  4. Trust: To have confidence in a situation.

If none of those fit, consider whether one of these ‘knowing' definitions fits.

  1. Know: Be aware of something so your stakeholder can factor this knowledge into their thinking and action.
  2. Understand: Fully appreciate something so you can then use that understanding to decide or act.

Sometimes it is true that your audience does ‘just' need to know something. I find however that nine times out of ten, there is another real reason. When we clarify that reason, the communication becomes more useful and the audience more engaged.

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

 

PS – In my upcoming Board Paper Bootcamp we will cover strategies for discerning your real outcome so you can then be more effective at engaging senior leaders and Boards. Learn more here.

How to know if your communication is quality

How to know if your communication is quality

Do you ever wonder if your papers and presentations hit the mark, or if your stakeholders are just being nice?

Today one of my clients laughed and said that at the end of our program, he now has a very different view of what good looks like.

After learning new strategies for clarifying the desired outcome for his communication and then how to structure a message that achieves that outcome, he sees the world differently.

So, I thought I'd share with you the top five questions that he and his colleagues now ask when reviewing their papers and presentations. Does the communication ….

S – Set the scene quickly by drawing the audience toward one insightful message?
C – Convey the right balance of strategic and operational detail?
O – Organise the ideas in a well-structured hierarchy?
R – Ready the audience for a productive discussion?
E – Engage the audience using a medium, style and tone that suits them?

This is one of the frameworks we'll focus on in my upcoming Board Paper Bootcamp programs.

I will host one for the European and American time zones during October and another for Australian and American time zones in March.

>> Learn more here.

I hope that helps. More next week.

Kind regards,
Davina

PS – You can learn more about this framework inside the Clarity Hub too.

Who to collaborate with on important paper?

Who to collaborate with on important paper?

When people learn to prepare papers and presentations for senior audiences they often focus on improving ‘writing' and ‘slide making' skills.

These are useful and often taught as though the paper or presentation is prepared by one individual.

However, in my experience this is often not the case.

Engaging senior audiences to make a recommendation or to update is a collaborative effort.

So, how to collaborate?

The first step is to decide who you should involve in the process, particularly at the initial scoping session.

I recommend inviting everyone who will have a role in preparing the paper, including more junior team members who may only focus on discrete sections.

You may also think a bit expansively to include people with these three Es:

  • Expertise: Are they familiar with the problem or have a usefully different perspective? Most likely they will have been involved in working on the issue, but it may be useful to think more broadly for higher stakes communication.
  • Evaluative ability: Do they think deeply about things, and are they a smart thinker? Sometimes it helps to have people outside of the context who bring raw intelligence to the effort. Involving them may be a useful way to help them learn more about the issue while also contributing to the communication.
  • Elevation: Do they have sufficient visibility of the strategic environment to help link your narrative to the broader business objectives? You may bring sufficient visibility on your own, or equally, you may bring someone senior into the session to share their perspective. It could be the person who commissioned the paper, someone who owns the relevant strategy or someone who knows the stakeholder group well.

In briefing the whole team, you will increase the chances of clarifying a message that hits the right notes with less effort from you all.

I hope that helps.

Kind regards,
Davina

 

PS – We will go into this and much more in my upcoming Board Paper Bootcamp. Learn more here.

 

An opportunity to boost your email writing skills

An opportunity to boost your email writing skills

I laughed when working for the first time with a senior team recently.

I asked them to do their pre-work and then come ready to collaborate on a modest piece of communication.

An email would be fine, I said. That way we can embed the concepts without being overwhelmed with problem solving.

After that we can move to solve bigger problems.

They followed the brief to a T and brought an email for us to work on.

Or so they said.

The email turned out to be a nudge to their peers on the Executive Committee to think holistically about a $1bn problem.

As you might imagine, we were quickly immersed in detailed problem solving and not ‘just thinking through an email'.

Preparing the ExCo then took a further three two-hour sessions!

So, not all emails are ‘just emails'.

They do however provide a hidden and often ignored opportunity to build our thinking skills.

My teeny tiny email course explains how.

In 10 minutes you will learn four key concepts.

It is available at no cost.

>> Access it here.

I hope that helps.

Kind regards,
Davina

How to cut the number of updates you deliver

How to cut the number of updates you deliver

In last week’s MasterClass I shared ideas to help you make your updates more interesting.

One idea I shared is the possibility of having greater influence by NOT updating at all.

It shocked some participant to silence!

We are so accustomed to updating our leaders and Steering Committees that we often don’t think WHY we are updating them.

If, in some situations, you sent an email update rather than taking up everyone’s time in a meeting?

I share this and more ideas about how to get the most out of your routine updates in the recording.

Access inside the Past Events area within my Clarity Hub – Register here >> 

Members can attend these sessions live, or access the recordings, as well as make use of the growing library of case studies, tools and templates and the ever-useful Pattern Picker. Learn more here >>

I hope that helps.

Davina

 

How to prepare updates that don’t bore you AND your audience

How to prepare updates that don’t bore you AND your audience

Do you typically go onto auto pilot when preparing updates?

You might take the last one and tweak it a bit, or fill in the template?

If so, you may be missing an opportunity.

Updates present an under-appreciated opportunity to engage senior and captive audiences.

In this morning’s MasterClass I shared two case studies as well as ideas to help you make the most of your next update. I shared ideas on how to

  • Open with something interesting rather than the same old project description you have used for every update for the current project
  • Define a clear outcome that takes full advantage of your specific ‘update opportunity’
  • Win credits with your senior leaders for future updates

I also answer a series of communication questions submitted by those who registered for the session.

The recording is available inside the Past Events area within my new Clarity Hub along with a wealth of tools and templates for you to use. The first month is free and then us$25 per month or US$250 per year for ongoing access.

>> Learn more here.

I hope that’s useful. More soon.

Davina

Can AI write your papers?

Can AI write your papers?

There is much talk about how artificial intelligence (AI) can write for us.

Nikki Gemmell wrote in The Australian newspaper that ‘We scribblers and hacks are staring at the abyss in terms of the chatbot future roaring at us’.

Professional copywriter Leanne Shelton lamented its impact on her business. She expects her copywriting business to take a 35 percent hit this year thanks to OpenAI releasing ChatGPT last November.

I am seeing clients experiment with a range of AI tools to help with their work too.

Yet, like Nikki Gemmel, I am not concerned about AI taking my job.

AI can help the writing process and will stretch us to think harder and better but is not (yet, at least) a match for human insight.

Let me explain why.

  1. AI can’t make a judgement call
  2. AI relies on humans asking really good questions
  3. AI can’t explain how it arrived at its answer
  4. AI’s writing ability is surprisingly poor
  5. AI is inherently biased

Let me unpack each of these further.

 

AI can’t make a judgement call

Even when organisations (eventually) set up their private AI instance AI can only offer limited help. This is so even after proprietary data is fed into it and appropriate access permissions are set up. 

Let’s imagine that we feed the past decade’s board and senior leadership team papers into a proprietary database. We then add an AI engine on top. Leaders and board members could enter queries such as: ‘What is our company’s data security strategy’. The AI engine would then ‘read’ all of its material and summarise it to explain what the papers say about our company’s data security strategy. That is useful as far as it goes.

But what if we asked it: ‘How could we improve our data security strategy?’. Again it would summarise what the papers in its database say about the potential risks inherent in our current strategies. Again, useful as far as it goes.

Assuming the information in the papers is both accurate and complete, the summary may be helpful. I also assume, but don’t know, if it would place the strategy at a point in time or give all the information equal weighting. For example, a five year old data security strategy would be out of date. Would it qualify the information from that strategy as being from five years ago, or merge it with all the other data security items? Would it give these equal weighting? I am not sure, but for this kind of information to be useful we would need to know.

The limitations become even more obvious when we ask the question that we really need an answer to. What would it say if we asked it: ‘What is the right data security strategy for our company in today’s context?’

This is where the human comes in. Opining on what the ‘right strategy’ for a specific company is relies on judgement. So far at least, AI doesn’t have the ability to make a judgement call.

 

AI relies on humans asking really good questions

AI can only answer the questions we ask using the data it has access to. If we ask the wrong question, we will get the wrong answer.

In my experience, asking the right question is a major part of the challenge. 

So even accounting for all of our limitations, humans are at an advantage here. We can interpret the questions we are asked, which can be very useful.

If I ask my team to answer a specific question, and they realise I am off base, they can answer the question I asked but also provide me with what I really need.

They can do this because they understand the context in which I operate, which an AI tool does not.

 

AI can’t explain how it arrived at it answer

While it is fun to ask these bots all sorts of questions to see how they answer, they can’t explain their reasoning. This matters if, for example, we need to audit something.

Imagine if you reported to a regulator that customer complaints for a product like a credit card fell by 20 percent during 2023. The regulator will ask you to provide your evidence to have confidence that this is true.

In the current world you can unpack the data feed. You can explain where the data was collected and when, how it fed into a dashboard that generated the result.   

AI doesn’t allow you to do this, it just asserts what it found using its own hidden processes.

 

AI’s writing ability is surprisingly poor

I put this to the test recently in a conversation with a client. Brooke had been playing with ChatGPT to see if it could help her write a risk memo on non-lending risk acceptance in digital processes.

The result was both unhelpful and hard to read. It identified that operational, cyber and compliance risk needed to be considered. While the information was true, Brooke already knew this and the output lacked context.

As a test, we put the response through my favourite writing tool, the Hemingway Editor. This involved copy-pasting the text from ChatGPT into Hemingway, which then evaluated the writing quality.

It assessed the quality was poor and gave a reading age of Grade 14.  That means it was written at university level. It classified 13 out of the 20 sentences as very hard to read.

You might not think is a problem given many people reading risk reports are university graduates.  It is, however, well above the grade 8 that I recommend for my clients to ensure fast and easy reading for busy executives. In contrast, this article scores at Grade 7.

We then asked it to improve the language of its original draft and re-tested with Hemingway. The new draft came in with a reading age of Grade 9, which was a significant improvement if we can ignore that the content was unhelpful.

I have repeated the test and had similar results.

 

AI is inherently biased

This is where the discussion gets really interesting. I have asked Chat GPT and Google’s equivalent, Bard, to provide me with information about topics that interest me.

I find it is useful when asking for facts. For example, which podcasts discuss board paper writing, or perhaps what art schools offer weekend life drawing classes in my city. The tool provides a tidy summary that is easier than hunting through links provided by Google or Bing.

I worry about its responses that include opinion, however. I had some fun and asked some personal questions to see what it would do.

For example: ‘How does the moon affect women’s health?’. Chat GPT claims the moon doesn’t affect women’s health. In contrast Bard described this as a contested area and offered a list of areas that are currently being researched. In this instance, the Bard answer was more accurate and more helpful.

In contrast, when asking about sensitive topics the answers were both contradictory and troubling. Both Bard and ChatGPT have strong views about topics such climate change and the move to electric vehicles among other things.

Both began by explaining that they were AI tools that could not offer opinion before doing just that.

Given AI is a tool coded by humans, those humans influence how it works and the results it gives. We need to be very aware of this and evaluate any results we receive accordingly.

My conclusion is that although AI is a fun tool to play with and can be useful for finding information, it needs to be used with care. It won’t replace human judgement any time soon. It will, however, push us to get better. We need to critically evaluate anything it ‘spits out’ and lift our own game so we are adding real value not just regurgitating facts.

 I hope that helps.

Cheers, 

Davina

Using peer pressure to skittle dissent rather than doing it yourself

Using peer pressure to skittle dissent rather than doing it yourself

How often have you presented a new capability or idea knowing that some stakeholders are not in your corner?

It is rare to have all your stakeholders championing your success so a common challenge to address.

During a coaching session this week, a client shared his clever hack which I thought would be useful to you also.

When showcasing a new product or strategy Fred leverages his winners to persuade his losers so he doesn’t have to. Let me explain the situation and then the solution.

The situation …

Imagine you are ready to showcase a new platform that your team has prioritised developing over the past six months. This platform underpins features for a host of other use cases.

In prioritising this platform, other projects have been necessarily delayed. This was the right decision given the risk of rework on other projects if they were built without leveraging this new foundational platform.

So, in the room you have winners and losers: Those who are excited about the prospect of the new features they can now access and those who have been delayed.

The solution …

Fred said that he deliberately invites both winners and losers to the showcase so long as the losers are not overwhelming in number or volume. This has a number of benefits. It

  • helps the losers have a better sense of perspective. The winners help them see that they or their own priorities have not been ignored, but rather ‘taken one for the greater good’.
  • means the losers are persuaded by their peers, rather than by him. Their peers are likely to have more credibility as Fred is the one who made the decision they didn’t like.
  • reduces the need for him to go one by one to showcase his product or strategy to either group.

I thought that was a clever hack and that it might help you also.

More next week.

 

Cheers,

Davina